Lewis Coolidge (1783–1871) was a nephew of Billy Dawes, the man who accompanied Paul Revere on his legendary midnight ride, and that adventurous spirit seems to have run in the family: in 1806 Coolidge set out on a five-year voyage around the globe aboard the China trader Amethyst. The crew's mission was to catch and skin fur seals to trade in China for tea, porcelain, silk, and other highly prized commodities, all while avoiding entanglements with European traders and ports unfriendly to the young American republic. His journals, passed down through the family for 200 years, offer a remarkably vivid impression of early U.S. maritime trade.

"On a barren island in the Pacific in the early 19th century, Lewis Coolidge lived in a rock hut and read Shakespeare while engaged in the global trade in seal skins, bęche-de-mer [sea cucumbers], and other goods exchanged between China and the young United States. His employment was dangerous and isolating, but Coolidge proves a more-than-adept chronicler."—Hester Blum